This novel could be Seattle’s harshest critic

Ever wonder how Seattle looks to a fictional architect forced to move to the Northwest for her brilliant husband’s job in the tech sector?

It’s not pretty.

Writer Maria Semple levels some pretty harsh criticism of Seattle in her newest novel, “Where’d You Go, Bernadette.” The book centers on anti-Seattle Bernadette and her 15-year-old daughter, Bee. Bernadette goes missing — possibly to avoid a family vacation — and Bee tries to track her down using emails and letters.

Here’s how NPR describes the character’s — and perhaps the author’s — take on life in Seattle’s snobbiest social set:

(Bernadette’s husband), a genius working at Microsoft on a robot featured in “the fourth-most-watched TED Talk” ever, takes to the healthier-than-thou Seattle culture — but not Bernadette. She holes up in the decrepit former Catholic school for wayward girls that they buy but never renovate, and she rants: about five-way intersections, slow drivers, Canadians, women who don’t dye their hair — and, especially, the PC parents at her daughter’s private school, whom she calls gnats. Semple is merciless in skewering false pieties, as she demonstrated in her hilarious New Yorker story “Dear Mountain Room Parents,” which featured a rash of inane emails expressing concerns over plans for a Day of the Dead celebration.

This character certainly seems to have hit home with Seattleites — so much so that some Stranger readers are reacting to her like she’s a real-life person.

“At least she never leaves the house so I don’t have to run the risk of running into her bi***y self on the streets,” writes one reader of the weekly paper’s book review.